To blur or not to blur (with poll)?

[blamillo]

Hi @Jeremiahbrown. Nice work iterating on this! I'm chiming in because I've had to paint a few night scenes recently.

I think the separation of values is what's going to really sell things and guide the viewer's eye here. Overall, my feeling is it's still much too bright and saturated to be convincing, and with so many bright values it's hard to know where to look first. You should be very sparing with things that approach 90-100% brightness and over 50% saturation in lighting situations like this. I've done a quick paintover of my own to demonstrate a few things - apologies for butchering your work!

It's easy to forget that the entire night sky is a source of light too, so it should be far from the darkest thing in your image. It doesn't need much adjustment itself - most of the effect here comes from bringing down the values of the background so it looks brighter by comparison.

I've been a little heavy-handed darkening the background and midground, but I think this is around the value range you should be looking at. It's going to be receiving weak cold light from the entire sky, and a slightly stronger cool light from...the moon out of frame, or an aurora, maybe? Same goes with our monster buddy. He's receiving a little more ambient light, but not enough to lift any of his values above the 70-80 range. I haven't spent long on preserving highlights, but remember to keep contrast on them subtle - probably no more than a 10-20% variation in brightness. All of the darkening I've done with a blue-grey brush on a Multiply layer, about 20% saturation and 30-40% brightness.

Regarding the flame - as the primary light source it'll obviously be the brightest thing in the image. But it's a really weak light, and it's not going to reach very far at all. Inverse square law, y'know. You could still go for a few warm highlights on the leaves in the midground, but less is more in this case, I reckon.

Anyhow, that's just how I'd approach it, for what it's worth. Best of luck!

[demotlj]

@Jeremiahbrown I agree with @blamillo and the draw-over regarding lighting. I've been following this thread and every time you desaturated the monster and accentuated the values difference, I thought it got better but I kept thinking it could be pushed even farther. The whole composition is so great and I think having the monster and the map really stand out as the focal point by darkening the rest as @blamillo did gives the viewer a real feel for the story.

[Jeremiahbrown]

Thanks so much for all of the feedback! Thank you for honest and helpful criticism. I so appreciate that. @blamillo I really like what you did with the image (and also the time you took to explain it!). That was really kind and made a huge difference. I'm going to implement those changes...tomorrow, haha. I've overcooked this image and need to get away from it for a bit

[TessaW]

It was fun watching the feedback on this one! Learned a lot from it.

[chrisaakins]

@Jeremiahbrown I agree with @LauraA This one looks great! That was a perfect way to solve your problem.

[Jeremiahbrown]

@TessaW that's great to hear that you're learning from the community via this image! Some really impressive thoughts and suggestions! Thanks @chrisaakins!
I ended up implementing what @blamillo and @demotlj were suggesting but I didn't want to make it too dark and tried to find that balance between believable enough and not too horror. The focus is supposed to be on the real monster in the background contrasted with the happy monster and the star on the map the idea being that the adventurer thought it'd be an easy trip to the star but realizes he was quite wrong! I know most people seemed to like the lighter but I was enjoying the torch so I made a version with that. Thanks again for all of the critiques, it's been really great!

[TessaW]

While I love how this turned out, I just wanted to give a shout out to your earlier version. Yes it was bright and busy, but I really liked the fun pay off seeing the cute simple version on the map and then seeing the real version, almost identical in color and silhouette, but way creepier! I This latest version, has a better pay off in terms of menacing and creepiness. Love both versions- well done!

[Jeremiahbrown]

@TessaW Awww, I liked the original for that reason too. Thanks for sharing!